I often find myself thinking about death, how at some point in time, in the future, I will cease to exist. Given this, and given what I am, I find myself incredibly lucky. There’s a one in a googol’s chance to go from nothing into consciousness, and it becomes exponentially more difficult to be born a human. We have such a broad range of thoughts and emotions, an overabundance of control (that we rarely use), and we have the opportunity to experience life in ways any other living creature cannot even dream of.
Ok, life is hard. But if you can read this, you are in the best position to tackle it.
Now think of other creatures that inhabit the earth, that represent life: fish, mammals, birds, insects. They are born into lives of habit that are so ingrained that they have developed instincts for survival. Literally they do not think or reason about a vast majority of their actions, but throughout history, being able to follow these habits to the letter made the difference between life and death, so it got ingrained into a process deeper than thought.
But one thing they have which we also do, but we forget. The strongest instinct of all: they would do anything for their survival. They don’t have ethics to worry about, and even if they do, they would literally eat their newborn babies to survive (I’m looking at you, marsupials). It doesn’t go more hardcore than this.
But on the concept of life preserving instinct, there is a form of life that we very often disregard, but that likes to make its presence known from time to time, through some incredibly unlucky circumstances.
The cell.
The cell as a living organism
This discussion thread is quite strongly inspired by a Kurtzgesagt video, which I’ll link below:
They define the cell as a living organism, which in retrospect, it was surprisingly close to humans.
A cell lives in a society of many other cells, where they work collectively to keep your body running correctly and smoothly. If everything goes well, your body is in harmony. However, that is rarely the case, since from time to time, the entire body needs to battle diseases, little tears from strain, and many cells die, many others need to sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the cells.
In all “animal” kingdom, you probably have never seen these kind of ethics before. But this is the life of a cell. They live to support you, and die to prevent you from doing the same (alongside their other more lucky compatriots).
But what happens if certain strains on their livelihood makes cells “feel” unsafe? They keep seeing cells close to them die and get replaced and die, for reasons that it does not understand. It’s you, drinking alcohol every night, or smoking every day, or eating things that make your cells starve and die due to lack of nutrients, or just kill them off directly because of some chemical you should have never ingested, or haven’t slept and your immune system needs to work extra hard, or bad infections may slip.
Think about it. The cell becomes scared for its life. And not just one, but multiple. So they start to gather up, rebel, and no longer help sustain your body, but work solely to sustain themselves. That gathering of “rebellious” cells is the tumor.
And defend themselves from the cells whose ethics are still stable. By any means necessary. A civil war has erupted in your body.
The civil war you’d fight
Throughout history, there have been many-a-times when men better than us have sacrificed their lives to protect their country, their families, knowing they at least would live to see another day. Maybe they thought of themselves as unlucky, maybe they were scared. But they did it anyway.
We like to think of ourselves as that, as brave, as selfless. But this is rare, and society has led us to the conclusion that we would not be helping us or our friends and families if we were to make these sacrifices. We would only protect the people in charge, who don’t care about us.
So we would run, because we had the chance.
But what if we could not? What if we had to stay and endure, in the context of us wanting to survive?
We would rebel. We would fight. We would kill if we had to, specifically those who’d oppose us.
For an authoritarian country, if enough people gather, they form a civil war against the governing bodies. In your body, if enough cells gather, they form a cancerous tumour against you.
If you think it’s completely random chance, it is not. You know what you are doing to your body, just as our politicians know what they are doing to us. If we are treated kindly, we leave them in peace. But if there are continuous threats to our livelihood, and we see no work done to keep us safe, well, history finds countries and people that are not so lucky as to survive a civil war.
Learning empathy
It’s a little difficult to find out that you are not actually as good and kind as you like to think of yourself. You have this darkness in you, that would activate and make you prepared to destroy everything around you, if that would mean you would live to see another day.
But you are not alone. Everyone around you has this, to a greater or lesser extent. They can justify it, they may even fight it if they have different priorities. But they have it.
Literally every cell in your body has this.
So what can you do, when you are surrounded every day by millions of Damocle’s swords? You learn to love them.
Weird, and a little close to a Stockholm Syndrome. But your friends, your spouse, even your kids, they exhibit the same behaviour, yet you love them. Your neighbours, not so much, but you get my point.
You have no closer neighbours than your own cells. But they are loyal motherfuckers. You really need to screw them over again, and again, and again, and again, and again, for ever, for them to say they finally had enough.
Otherwise, they are there to support you, to give you energy, to push you forward in life, to get you up when you’ve fallen down. They are there to boost your mood, or relax you when you’re in pain, or give you that extra power when you’re in danger. They quietly help you take each and every breath, and the only thing they ask for, is to make their life a little bit easier.
That’s all they ask. If you can, of course. But even if you think you can’t.
Try.
I think I know a lot about many things 